Can TV make your child fat?

tatistics show that the risk of adult obesity increases by 7% for every additional hour of weekend television watched by 5 year olds. It was originally thought that TV led to a more sedentary lifestyle but there is no conclusive evidence to support this so what’s going on?

"Rosie ate 3 more pieces of pizza when watching TV"

Eleven year old Rosie is active but still slightly overweight. We gave Rosie her favourite food, pizza, on two different evenings, one sitting in front of the television and the other sitting at the table. Rosie ate 3 more pieces of pizza when watching TV which, if she ate pizza every day, would be a whole extra 118 pizzas a year or 81900 calories. Why? It could be that when your brain is distracted by television it ignores your internal satiety signals.

How you eat is as important as what you eat so eat at a dinner table with the television switched off.

How do you avoid overeating?

Since the 1970s portion sizes have increased dramatically amongst children and adults. According to psychologists children rely on adults to show them how much to eat so we decided to see if, when doubling portion sizes, children know when their satiety signals are saying stop.

"They ate 73% more on the second day"

We are all born with an efficient system that tells us when we are hungry and when we are full. However, very early in life we are taught to override these signals. When children are presented with a large portion they will eat all of it in spite of feeling full. If children overeat consistently they are going to be overweight.

We took a class full of children and gave them an identical meal on two consecutive days. The difference was that on the first day we gave them the government recommended allowance and on the second day we doubled it.

Did the children know when to stop? Not quite. They ate 73% more on the second day than they did on the previous one. A 2000 study showed that three year olds still heard their satiety signals and stopped eating when they were full. Five year olds, on the other hand, finished their plates no matter what the portion size.

Eating habits are cultivated early on in life- if we are not careful we may be the first generation to outlive our children because of obesity so don’t overfeed your child.